The disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No. HEI 9-332837 filed on Dec. 3, 1997 including the specification, drawings and abstract is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to an information terminal device connectable to a cellular phone and control method for the device. More particularly, the invention relates to lock control for preventing a memory of the information terminal device from outputting its content.
2. Description of the Related Art
In keeping with the increasing availability of various communication systems using computers, cellular phones or other communication devices and systems, there are proposed various technologies that use information terminals, such as portable terminals, vehicle-installed terminals and the like, for sending and receiving E-mails (messages) or utilizing on-line information services. The demand to utilize on-line information services is strong particularly in conjunction with vehicle-installed terminals, because during travel, often times a driver or a passenger desires to obtain information helpful to travel such as, for example, the location of parking lots near a destination, traffic condition on route to the destination, etc.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. HEI 7-105492 discloses a system in which a driver can obtain desired information (various facility information, restaurant information, and the like) by using a vehicle-installed telephone.
In many cases, an information terminal device is used by only one person. In fact, its use is very often limited to a specific person. As for vehicle-installed terminals, it is also often the case that such a terminal is used only by a specific person. Therefore, most information stored in information terminal devices is information related to individuals. Normally, the user of such a device desires that such personal information be kept confidential, and it is desirable to provide some security arrangement to protect the personal information. For security protection in, for example, personal computers, it is a widespread procedure to input the name and password of a user before an application is started. However, such a procedure combersome and inconvenient in the case of a portable terminal device, a vehicle-installed terminal device or the like.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an information terminal device capable of easily and securely locking access to individual person-related information.
According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided an information terminal device including a connection device for connecting to a cellular phone that communicates with an external device, a communication device for communicating data with the cellular phone connected to the connection device, a memory that stores data, a data output unit that outputs data stored in the memory, an access control device for allowing or preventing access to data stored in the memory, and a detection device for detecting an identification number of the cellular phone. The access control device prevents access to data stored in the memory if the identification number is not pre-registered or if the identification number is not detected.
This information terminal device specifies a user and determines information accessible by the user, only if the user connects a cellular phone to the device. Therefore, the information terminal device improves security of personal data and controls access to data stored in the information terminal device, by requiring a user merely to perform a simple operation, that is, to connect a cellular phone, instead of requiring a user to perform a more complicated operation. In this aspect of the invention, the identification number of the cellular phone may the same as its phone number.
The information terminal device may allow a plurality of identification numbers of cellular phones to be registered, so that the use of the various information stored in the memory may be controlled separately for each identification number. The information terminal device specifies a user by the cellular phone connected thereto by the user. Therefore, even if a plurality of users use a single information terminal device, data management can be performed separately for each user.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided an information terminal device further including a navigation device in addition to the construction described above. Data to be access controlled may be data that is settable by a user of the navigation device. Therefore, confidentiality can be maintained separately for each user by preventing access to data such as registered location points used for setting a destination.